Tournament should be full of madness, as usual

Thursday

Mar 20, 2008 at 12:01 AM

Jason Queen

It is indeed a rite of spring, as ageless as Barry Bonds' head growing and the Rays and Royals positioning to be the worst team in baseball.Ah, March Madness. For a sports fan, there is no better weekend than the one that officially begins around noon today. Four solid days. Over 30 hours of basketball. And thanks to Time Warner digital cable, some of us will be able to watch every game.Dying to see that Notre Dame/George Mason matchup or UNLV/Kent State? No problem. And most people will have a three-day weekend thanks to Good Friday. Wow.But when it's all said and done, most of us, especially in this region, believe the Tar Heels will be cutting down the nets at the AlamoDome in San Antonio on April 7.Not my buddy Owen Schwarz, who helps us cover football and basketball here. The most knowledgeable, passionate ACC basketball fan I've ever met, the dude bleeds Duke blue.How bad? With the No. 1 pick in his ACC fantasy basketball league, he took Sean Singletary. He asked me about it, and I suggested Tyler Hansbrough.He thought that was one of the stupidest ideas he had heard in a while. Of course, Hansbrough put together one of the greatest seasons in league history. I don't like to say I told you so, but, you know.Unfortunately for him and the rest of the Duke fans, I just don't think the Blue Devils are quite good enough to win it all. If they had an inside presence at all, it might be different. You put Kenny George (the 7-foot-7 giant from UNC-Asheville) on that team, and they are a tough matchup. Kenny G isn't much, but other teams have to account for him in the paint.Although the tournament is one of the greatest events in sports, pure magic stretched out over three weeks, it begs the question I've asked over and over: why not football? Going back to Duke, if the Devils were to win the national championship they would have to play in Washington, D.C. one week, Phoenix the next, and San Antonio the next. If they flew out of Durham on Wednesday the first two weeks and Thursday for the Final Four, those 12 team members will miss a minimum of six days of classes. They won't return to class until Wednesday after the national championship game, and they missed at least 10 days worth of classes during the regular season and ACC tournament.Now, let's look at football. If the NCAA put together a 16-team playoff that ran over four weeks, the national champion would miss exactly two days of class (the Friday before the first two rounds). The semifinals and finals would be in late December and early January, when kids are out on Christmas break.If the NCAA thinks they can make money off the basketball tournament, which they obviously do with the billions of dollars CBS spends on rights to the Big Dance, can you imagine the cash that would flow in football?Speaking of cash, it's about time we start being realistic about big-time college basketball players. Two of the best in the country will meet in a first-round game - USC's O.J. Mayo and Kansas State's Michael Beasley. This will probably be the last time one of them dons his school's uniform, and the next-to-last time the other one does. They will both leave after this year.Why have they been allowed to come to college for a year, under the impression they are college students? They're hired hands, nothing more, nothing less.So why not start calling big-time college basketball what it is: a business. The schools would become more or less sponsors of their teams, and the kids wouldn't have to waste everybody's time pretending to be college students.Oh, well, enough negative about what's not right with college athletics. Here's what's right - North Carolina, Georgetown, Memphis and UCLA will battle it out at the AlamoDome, and the Tar Heels will topple the Bruins in a championship pitting two of the most storied programs in the country. If this is how you filled your bracket out, start erasing now. I am the worst bracket-filler-outer in history.Either way, good luck and have fun.Jason Queen can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 220, or at jason.queen@the-dispatch.com.

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